Guardian: Protectors of Light

Guar
dian: Protectors
of Light

Melanie Houtman

Guardian:
Protectors of Light

Copyright © 2015 Melanie
Houtman

All rights
reserved.

“
Once upon a
time, a long time ago, were six Spirits. These Spirits were called
the Spirits of Light; the Almighty Spirit, the Spirit of Innocence,
the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Joy, The Spirit of Night and Day
and the Spirit of Darkness. These six Spirits combined their powers
to create a magical world and balance every element in
it.

This last
Spirit, the Spirit of Darkness, was young and ambitious, and he
envied the influence its older brothers and sisters had on the
world, compared to its own.

To these five
Spirits, the good and the light were the most important elements,
and were therefore the elements to rule their world. This left the
Spirit of Darkness, as he was in charge for the bad and dark
elements in the world, in the dust.

For many
years, the Spirits lived in peace, in their very own Palace of
Spirits. They watched over the six Realms and its inhabitants,
making sure all lived well and peaceful.

And still,
there was barely anything for the young Dark Spirit to do. He
started to use his power to agitate the Lunariae, pursuing them to
do the bad instead of the good; it was only a matter of time before
the Spirits of Light discovered the chaos in the land was all his
doing.

They decided
to punish him. The Spirits turned the young Spirit into a human and
locked him away in a dark prison; the worst mistake the Spirits
could’ve ever made.

The Spirits
believed that as a human, the young Spirit could no longer do any
harm. But they couldn’t have been more wrong...

They’d
forgotten that as they turned him human, they didn’t immediately
strip him from his powers. The young human’s Spirit abilities grew
stronger, and as the years went by, he grew angrier. Inside his
prison, he trained his abilities, becoming less and less human,
despite the fact he could never fully regain his spirit form. He
would always remain a half-blood.

The young
half-blood remained inside his cell for centuries, until he, after
having been locked away for centuries, finally managed to break
free from his prison.

The anger and
envy he’d felt toward the spirits had grown stronger due to the
dark he’d been trapped in; his Spirit had gone corrupt. Anger and
envy had become hatred.

A battle
commenced, which soon grew out into war; the Spirits of Light
versus a young half-spirit with a hunger for vengeance and
power.

The war
lasted for thousands of years, and Lunaria suffered underneath it
all; the Spirits were immortal, yet not indestructible. They fought
the young Spirit, who they once called Asura, but who now went by
the title of the Demon, but to Lunaria’s inhabitants, he’d be known
as the Master.

He used the
Spirit Realm’s pure energy and turned it against the Spirits,
corrupting all surrounding land in the process.

This left the
Spirits of Light outnumbered and defeated. The Master of Nightmares
locked them away in the same dark prison as he’d once
been.

From that
moment on, with getting rid of the Spirits of Light, he’d be free
to rule the Six Realms in Lunaria, without any fear of being
defeated ever again.

Or so he
thought he would.

Before they
were trapped by the Master, the Spirits of Light sent their Sources
of Light, which they once used to create and guide Lunaria to
another dimension, hoping they wouldn’t be lost forever.

These Sources
were sent to Earth, where they were meant to find a new vessel.
Each of the five Sources would find a human being, pure enough to
become a Guardian of Light.

Together, the
Guardians would from the Bond of Light, the only bond strong enough
to destroy the Master of Nightmares.

However, a
prophecy was read by one of the Spirits of Light at the very last
moment. It said that a thousand years would go by, with ten
Generations of Guardians, yet only the tenth would
succeed.

They called
this generation the Generation of Hope.

The only Bond
which would be strong enough to save Lunaria.”

“
Wow, Daddy!
That is the most awesome one yet!”

“
Indeed it
was, Daddy! Where did you find this one?”

A father by the name of
Martin smiled at his two children. A boy and a girl; three and five
years old. The girl was the oldest.

“
Who knows?”
he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Perhaps I made it
up, or perhaps I didn’t. As long as you like it, it shouldn’t
matter to you.”

Both his children were
obsessed with fairytales; something he loved almost just as much as
the children did.

Their parents would
usually spend entire days telling them all the fairytales they
could find. The boy’s name was James; the girl’s Samira.

Their parents enjoyed
seeing their children enjoy something so simple; even when they
grew older, their mother would continue reading them the stories
their father used to.

It helped the two
siblings forget the terrible accident that caused their father to
be taken from them permanently.

“
The
Protectors of Light” turned out to be the story which would become
James’s all-time favourite. He’d often make up his own stories of
various Generations; they were as real to him as real
people.

Even as he grew out of
his childhood and got in his preteen years, the story stayed with
him. Probably purposely, as the story was a way to keep his father
close and the love he’d always shown for the little
fairytale.

James was just a boy. A
boy with an incredibly wide imagination.

A boy who was loved by
many, who often made it very hard for anyone to hate or dislike
him. Of course he had his flaws, but after all, everyone
did.

James actually kept a lot
of his childhood way of thinking with him as he grew up; he kept
his belief in the paranormal, and especially his belief in
Magic.

Nobody in his family
truly believed in Magic except for him, save the support he
received from his older sister. That’s one thing he knew. But he
couldn’t help himself; he just spent night after night, reading the
stories he’d written, which had been based on the Protectors of
Light.

He often found his mind
wandering, thinking about what would happen if Lunaria was a real
place. What’d it be like if the Master didn’t reign over the Six
Realms; what if the Spirits would’ve won? Or; what if there would
never have been a war at all?

But what he never considered, were the consequences his
obsession with this particular, seemingly innocent fairytale would
bring later in life..

I

The
Five

Thirteen years later

A gloomy autumn morning
announced itself. The sun tried to break through the thick pack of
clouds hanging overhead, but without much success.

A post office van stopped
in the middle of the street, at the sidewalk by number 32. The
delivery boy left his van and opened the back to collect a package.
He then entered the house’s front yard, off to deliver the said
package.

From upstairs, a boy was looking out of his bedroom window,
following the delivery boy’s every step as he walked into the front
yard. The boy’s name was James Riverdale. His red hair
lay on his head
like flames, with two bright blue eyes sparkling
underneath; a pointy nose between them.

“
That’s got
to be it,” James said. “It’s finally here!”

He made his way
downstairs as quickly as he could, his feet drumming hastily on the
stairs, but as soon as he’d reached the hallway, his
eighteen-year-old sister had already answered the door.

“
Package for
Mr Riverdale,” the delivery boy said to her.

“
Ah,” she
replied. Her name was, of course, Samira. “I’ll go get him for
you.”

However, she didn’t have
to, as James walked up behind her, placing a hand on her
shoulder.
“That’d be mine,” he said. “Where should I sign?”

“
Right here.”
The delivery boy handed him a pen and a clamp board. James quickly
wrote down his name and returned the clamp board, exchanging it for
the package.

“
Enjoy,” the
delivery boy said, before walking back to his van. Meanwhile, it’d
started to rain.

James shut the door,
watching his package closely, until he noticed his sister was
looking at him.

“
What?” he
said. Samira shook her head. She wore a big smirk on her
face.

“
Really
, James?
Ordering books again?”

James’s eyes shifted from
his sister to the package in his hands. “Uh... Yeah?” he said.
“What’s wrong with that?”

Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Well... You
do
know
there’s a library just around the block, huh?”

James nodded. “I do,” he
said, “but...”

“
But
what
?” Samira said.
“It’d be much easier if you just went over there and
rented
a couple books every month or so, instead of
buying
a bunch every month!” She spread her arms out while
talking. “Renting books is free!”

James shrugged. “I don’t
know,” he said, “but somehow I never find anything interesting
inside that old library... But I do in bookstores.”

Samira crossed her arms.
“Your call,” she said. She turned around and started to walk away.
“But anyway, what books did you buy this time?”

“
Oh, you just
watch!” James shouted, as he ran past his sister, into the living
room. “A bunch of the newest fantasy books. They looked really
interesting!”

Meanwhile, his sister had
bent over the coffee table and picked up the newspaper, and was
busy reading an article. “Well, this might sound interesting to you
as well,” she said.

James tilted his head as
he looked at her. “What do you mean?” he said, as he moved over to
his sister, who was pointing out an article inside the
newspaper.

“
Look!” she
said. “The library’s closing for expansion next week; they’re
giving away old books!”

“
Really?”
James said, as he put down the package on the table to have a
closer look at the article. “Hey, you’re right! Sweet!” He looked
at his sister as a big smirk grew on his face.

“
Are you
thinking what I’m thinking, sis?”

Sabrina smiled at him. “I
think you’re going there to snatch a couple of books.”

“
I sure am,”
James grinned. “First, I’m going to read one of these,” he said,
while pointing at the still unopened package resting on the coffee
table, “and when the rain’s stopped, I’m heading down there to take
a peek! Old books are the best!”

He then picked up his
package and disappeared out of the room, off to spend the morning
stuck in a book.

Shortly after he’d gone
upstairs, a blonde woman appeared in the living room. “I thought I
heard James?” she said.

Her name was Cheyenne,
James’s and Samira’s mother.

“
Yes, he just
left with another of his book-orders,” Samira said. “Well... At
least he doesn’t spend his money on games or other
stuff.”

Cheyenne smiled. “He’s
got that love for books from his father, that’s for sure,” she
said.

Samira chuckled, moving
her hands to her hips. “Yes, he does,” she said. She shook her
head; seeing how much James resembled his father gave her joy, yet
also a sense of sadness. Thinking back to the way they lost them,
James resembling his father was a lot less fun.

According to the doctors,
Martin had died from the injuries he’d gained after a car accident;
the same white lie Samira could remember her father coughing at her
mother in his last conversation they ever shared. But still, Samira
couldn’t shake the feeling something more had been going
on.